I got the opportunity to check out Roots of Pacha on the Nintendo Switch to see what it brings to the table.
I recently had the opportunity to play with Version 1.1 of Roots of Pacha, a co-op farming & life simulation game set in the Stone Age. You play as a villager who was adopted by a tribe as a baby. This tribe has recently settled in a distant valley and the player must help the villagers grow the village from a collection of huts into something much more.
For this review, I played Roots of Pacha on the Nintendo Switch.
Just on a surface level, Roots of Pacha is an enjoyable life simulation game. The player is given a number of tasks to fulfill as time progresses in the game, but there’s no real sense of urgency to getting these tasks accomplished, though it helps the game’s story progress that much faster is you do focus on them. Most of the usual tasks are available in games of this type: foraging for wood and stone, planting crops, fishing, taming animals, and so on.
Roots of Pacha
Developer: Soda Den
Platform: Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/, Xbox Series X/S, Mac OS, Windows
Release Date: April 25, 2023 (initial), November 28, 2023 (Switch, PS4/PS5), July 31, 2024 (Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
These tasks are simple enough to perform that they make the basic game cycle of Roots of Pacha pretty easy to fall into. Before you know it, several in-game days have passed.
And that’s when the game gets really interesting.
Because it turns out there’s more to Roots of Pacha than just a simulation game, a lot more. There’s also a spiritual quest your character must go on to connect with a number of “totem spirits.” These quests involve exploring caves and solving a series of puzzles in order to gain access to the totem statues. This is a twist in the gameplay that I wasn’t expecting at all and I found it delightful.
Another great thing about Roots of Pacha is that there is so much to do! The main village in the game is populated with dozens of characters, each with their own interests and personalities and once you begin exploring the surrounding world you find different foods that can be foraged, animals that can be tamed once you learn how, and a whole world that feels like it’s full of potential, especially, as stated before, once you start exploring the caves. For instance, wanting to fish opens up a mini-game where you track fish by their shadows to “catch” them for food.
It’s also great that the game never once makes you feel rushed to complete a task in any way. The dialogue even includes phrases like “when you’re ready, you can do ______” which just adds to the vibe that this is a game that can be played at one’s leisure.
It’s also really interesting how the village society evolves as more “ideas” are unlocked. I won’t discuss this further because of spoilers but this is a really neat take on how a society in-game can evolve over time.
Roots of Pacha will absolutely be a fun time for anyone who likes playing simulation games. It will also be sure to intrigue gamers who like to check out games full of mystery and things to explore, because this game has plenty of both.
